


Blumenkranz

by AndyAO3



Series: Robot and Marshmallow 2: Electric Boogaloo [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Disabled Character, Established Relationship, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Sad Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: The Institute will sink to any level to get their hands on Ted. Even when they stoop to doing something unthinkable, he still refuses to play their game.
Relationships: Harkness | A3-21/Male Sole Survivor
Series: Robot and Marshmallow 2: Electric Boogaloo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601296
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	1. crumbling lies

**Author's Note:**

> do you know how many titles this has gone through. DO YOU. i'm still trying to figure out what my naming scheme is for the chapters. like i think i might use hiroyuki sawano tracks? but i might also just name things from the ted playlist as a whole and not worry about composers. or go for a composer that fits both of them instead of just one of them. ohh decisions. (edit: went the playlist route. if you wanna know the tracks, hmu!)
> 
> this is a continuation of an earlier fic, which i will set up as being part 1 of the series here in a bit once i've got this properly posted. i've tried to make this as understandable as possible to people who haven't read that fic, but keep in mind that it's a sequel to a long, finished piece that's already borked the canon timeline pretty hard. also neither was ever beta'd so thar be typos :U
> 
> harkness gets fucked up in this one, but don't worry. he's getting fixed. if i figure out where the hell i'm taking the plot, anyway. like i've got a loose plan but i really don't know where this is going to end. i don't even totally know who i want my LW to be! it's wild, folks.

_They wouldn't even bother,_ Harkness had said.  _I worry about them killing and replacing me more than I would ever worry about you being compromised._

When he'd said that, Ted had thought that it was about trust. Or confidence in Ted's abilities, or... Something. And yeah, maybe part of it had been, but it wasn't the whole story. There was no way in hell that it was the whole story. It just took hearing a horribly familiar voice over an intercom in a bunker to figure that out.

It'd started out as something fairly routine. Harkness had gone to do his thing with the Railroad while Ted and MacCready had done odd jobs around the downtown area. One such job - for an entertainingly crazy ship full of robots, no less - had sent them all the way out to Fort Hagen, which had turned out to be crawling with synths. So Ted had made the executive decision to send a courier for Harkness and hang out at Sunshine Tidings until he arrived to provide backup.

(Of course, MacCready didn't get it, but he didn't exactly complain about having his contract extended either.)

Turns out, Fort Hagen went a lot deeper than just the surface level. There was an entire bomb shelter underneath the main building. Harkness didn't trust it, but Ted knew that whatever the synths were guarding had to be important since they didn't seem to be hunting for things to loot. He was the one who insisted that they had to head downstairs, even after they had the thing the robots on the boat had wanted. Even though Harkness was clearly tense.

He'd said it would be fine. He had been the one to tell Harkness and MacCready that. And then they'd heard that terrible voice on the loudspeaker.

_"Well, well. If it isn't the popsicle."_

Ted went very, very still. Moving only to glance at Harkness, who had that deer-in-the-headlights look he got when he locked up.

_"I see you brought friends,"_ the voice said. Ted's grip on the inner workings of his power fist tightened.  _"Took you long enough to get here. The boys tell me you haven't even been bothering to follow the breadcrumbs I left you."_

"Harkness," Ted began slowly. Harkness flinched. He knew, didn't he? "Who is he?"

It took a moment for him to respond. "Kellogg," he said. "His name's Kellogg. He's a merc."

MacCready blinked at them. "Kellogg? Heck, even I know that name."

"He works for the Institute," Harkness continued. "Has for years."

The merc's whole face crinkled in on itself. "Jeez. Explains why people say you should avoid him."

But Ted knew there was more to it than that. There had to be. It had been a sixty year gap between vault openings, and the bastard that'd shot his wife had looked roughly middle-aged even then. If Harkness knew Kellogg by his voice, then that meant they'd probably worked together. And that was what, eleven years ago? So this merc had kept right on working for forty-nine years after he'd been tasked with cracking open Vault 111.

Harkness had been open about what the Institute wanted Ted's son for, open enough that it was probably common knowledge for higher-level synths at the time. Which implied that Harkness knew the man that had broken into the vault that day, knew he was likely to still be alive, and hadn't said a thing.

A trail of breadcrumbs, Kellogg had said. Had Harkness been covering them up?

"What else are you hiding from me?" Ted asked.

Harkness winced again, looking for a moment at MacCready before shaking his head. "Not here. Not now." His big grey-blue eyes were pleading; he was terrified, but it didn't seem like it was directed at the Institute this time. "Please."

_"Looks like your boyfriend's got a little bit of a software problem,"_ Kellogg remarked. 

Ted whipped around to glare at the nearest security camera. Out of reach, mounted on the ceiling. He wanted to be angry. Was angry, actually. But an outburst wouldn't help. It would just scare Harkness worse.

He let out a breath through his nose. "MacCready, could you shoot that thing for me?"

"Got it," MacCready said; the shot from his ten mil made Ted's ears ring a little.

Kellogg laughed over the intercom.  _"Someone's pissed. Guess that was a low blow."_ Ted wished he could shut that up as easily, but they'd have to shoot every speaker in the entire complex. Fucker couldn't see or hear, but he could taunt.  _"Well, you know where to find me whenever you're done with your lovers' quarrel."_

Probably at the bottom of the bunker, Ted guessed as the white-noise hum of the open mic cut out with a pop of static. Then he looked back at Harkness and his anger faded to a quiet simmer; he rarely saw the big guy with an expression that openly miserable.

"When we get home, we're talking about this," he said. He made sure to keep his voice gentle, all too aware by then of what Harkness was afraid of. "But either way, I'm gonna go find this guy so I can beat some answers out of him."

"Understood," Harkness mumbled.

The last of Ted's anger tapered off. "You don't have to come with me if you don't want to," he said.

Ahah, now that got Harkness to look up. "Is that your way of saying you don't want me there?"

"I always want you," was Ted's near-instant reply. "I just don't want you to feel trapped."

Finally, a smile. "Never," Harkness said. He reached out to take the hand that wasn't covered in a power fist to give it a gentle squeeze. "Lead the way."

Ted grinned and squeezed right back. Meanwhile, MacCready made a disgusted noise as he was forced to watch.

"You two are a couple of saps," he grumbled.

\---

It turned out that reaching the final door was a bit of an anti-climax. Years of being left largely to themselves with little to no maintenance being done had fucked with the synths' servos, meaning the exacting calculations of how and where to move to aim properly were thrown off and had to be redone on the fly. And since they hadn't been made with those additional calculations in mind, they were slow to do them.

So for someone like Ted who was used to fast-paced brawls, their flimsy frames and slow reaction times made them easy to take down. The only ones that were annoying were the ones equipped with automatic weapons, and he had Harkness and MacCready to handle those; if blunt force could be considered good against them, then bullets were even better. And thus, down they went. Through the synths, taking stairwell after elevator after hallway after stairwell, until they reached the last threshold.

Ted sucked in a breath as he stood in front of the door, tried not to think about how much his hands were shaking, took hold of the handle, and-

And there he was, that son of a bitch. Tall, imposing, with a deep scar carved into his smug face. It was almost the exact same face that Ted had seen all those years ago, with only a few more lines to mark the passage of time. There was no doubt about it: this was the same guy that had shot Rani.

"Theodore Edwin Davies," Kellogg said, spinning casually in a chair as he sat in front of one of the bunker control room's many terminals. There was a clipboard in his hands; Ted couldn't make out the text of what he was reading, but it wasn't hard to guess the contents. "Born February 28th, 2045, at the Victory Memorial Hospital in Waukegan, Illinois. Diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, albinism, and borderline personality disorder."

Kellogg looked up and smiled to himself.

"Guess the Institute didn't think about that part," he mused. "Probably skipped ahead to the part where you had a degree in applied physics with a minor in robotics, or should I say..." Here, he made a show of reading from the clipboard. " 'Automation and Intelligent Robotics Engineering Technology.' Fancy. And then there's your boyfriend-"

Ted snarled. "If you lay a hand on Harkness-"

"Harkness? That what he's called now?" The old mercenary smirked as he set the clipboard aside. "Have to admit, A3, I didn't recognize you right away. That new face of yours is a fine piece of work. But you still move like a courser, don't you?"

Fuck. Without looking back, Ted reached out and grasped around fumblingly until a big hand found his. He squeezed; Harkness squeezed back. Still with him, no matter how scared and angry they both were. And MacCready was there too, even if Ted could hear his horrified mutter of "what the hell" in the background. He hadn't left either, not yet.

Kellogg eyed them for a moment. "How much do you know, Davies?"

"I know you're older than you look," Ted replied. "I know why the Institute needed an untainted genome. I know they were the ones behind what happened, even if you were the one who..." His voice hitched, and he paused to collect himself. "I, I know there's nothing to fix. That there's no point trying. And I know how long it's been since you and the Institute took everything from me."

"Smart man," Kellogg said. Then he stood from his chair with a stretch, twisting his neck until it gave a little  _crack_ . "I guess that makes the next question, 'how much have you guessed?' "

Ted eyed the merc warily as the cogs turned in his head. "You mentioned breadcrumbs and said you'd waited for me to find them," he said, "but if you're a merc, then you're probably not doing that for your health. Which makes you the bait."

"Good, good. Keep going."

"And if the Institute thinks I'd take it, then they must not think that I've figured out the timeline," he continued. Suddenly, it dawned on him; he glanced back at Harkness sharply. "Oh, Christ-"

" _Now_ he gets it." Kellogg's smirk turned downright predatory. "All that set-up, and in the end it's blown wide open by the one surviving bot that's obsolete enough to not have memory failsafes. It scared the eggheads shitless, honestly. From what I've heard, they're pretty sure your man here killed the old head of the robotics division a few years back."

Ted narrowed his eyes at Kellogg and took a step back, shielding Harkness as well as he could as the grip on his hand tightened. "No. I don't care what you do to me, you can't have him."

Harkness spoke up behind him, uncharacteristically quiet. "Ted-"

" _What?_ Don't fight me on this, Harkness. I won't fucking let you."

"It's not me they want."

Ted froze. When he turned his gaze back on Kellogg, the old merc was still smiling.

"Should've left your boyfriend at home for this one, Davies," he said. "A3-21, initialize factory reset. Authorization code beta-five-three-alpha."


	2. part of this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ted realizes what he might lose if he keeps going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no regrets, except that i went with titles instead of lyrics for my theme naming. which means the line "truth is like blood underneath your fingernails" doesn't get used. ah well, at least there's a slightly unhinged son lux track for everything

At first, MacCready had no idea what it was that he was even witnessing. It was all too much to process; his boss was a synth? And his  _other_ boss was over two hundred thirty years old? The unreality of it had thrown him for a minute. 

Which was probably what gave Kellogg the opening to do what he did. To do... Whatever that was, to Harkness. If MacCready had been thinking straight, he would've recognized the code coming out of the guy's mouth as Something Not-Good and put a bullet between his eyes before he could finish. But MacCready wasn't thinking straight. He was panicking, still wondering what the hell he should do about his boss being a synth. If he should even do anything.

And so the code went uninterrupted. And Harkness, well... If MacCready had to draw a comparison, he would say it was like someone had cut the strings on a puppet. Harkness just...  _Sagged_ . His eyes went blank, he stopped breathing, his face became this creepy, unreadable mask. His vicegrip on Ted's hand even went completely slack. 

That last part was what Ted noticed, dragging him away from his staring contest with Kellogg to blink up at Harkness.

"Babe?" It was so weird to hear Ted's voice get so small. "Hey, no. This isn't okay. Harkness-"

"He can't hear you," Kellogg said. "Or at least he won't listen."

Ted whipped back around to glare. "What the fuck have you done to him?"

"Oh come on, Davies. You're smarter than that." MacCready gripped his gun that much tighter at the other merc's tone. Ted had ordered him earlier not to shoot unless ordered to do so, but disobeying was looking more tempting by the minute. "You know how a factory reset works, right?"

MacCready didn't, but the horror in Ted's eyes said he certainly did. "No. No, you can't do that."

"We can." Kellogg tilted his head. "Always could, in fact. Guess he never mentioned that part."

That struck a nerve. Snarling, Ted stormed up to Kellogg to grab him by the collar; Kellogg let it happen, still with that dumb smirk plastered across his face. "Fix him," Ted growled.

Kellogg shrugged. "Afraid I can't do that."

"Bullshit. There has to be a system restore."

"Maybe, but that'd be something for the eggheads to find, not me." The old merc's smirk turned into a grin. "Guess you kinda have to go to the Institute now, huh?"

Ted exhaled hard through his nose, letting go. He didn't take his eyes off of Kellogg when he spoke next. "MacCready," he said, "take out every camera in this room."

"Gladly." A quick survey of the control room gave MacCready the locations of four of them; he took them out with a single bullet each, followed by every terminal just to be safe.

It wasn't until the last shot rang out that Ted finally relaxed somewhat. Or at least he seemed relaxed right up to the moment where he hauled back and slammed his fist into Kellogg's face.

(Personally, MacCready would've used the power fist to do it.)

"Fuck you," Ted sneered, "and fuck what the Institute wants. You're lucky I know better than to kill the fucking messenger, or else I'd punch your goddamn head off."

Kellogg staggered, wiping at his mouth. "Ow," he said. "Think you clipped me with the pip-boy there..."

"Want me to do it again? 'Cause I will." Except he wouldn't. MacCready could see that Ted's knuckles had already started swelling, and he was flexing his hand like it hurt. "MacCready, tie this son of a bitch up."

"Yup." Holstering his rifle, MacCready came forward with the zip ties. Big as Kellogg was, he didn't fight it when MacCready grabbed his hands to bind them together. Just seemed kind of resigned to it, actually.

Meanwhile, Ted kept talking. "I know depression when I see it, Kellogg," he said. "You wanna die? Then your punishment is that I don't let you."

Out of the corner of his eye MacCready could see Kellogg's smirk fade, and not just because the circulation in his hands had been cut off either. "Is that right?"

"You're gonna come with us back to Sunshine Tidings. Then I'll send you to the Castle along with a couple of heavily armed robots. If you try to run, they'll take out your kneecaps and carry you. If you try to run before we get to Sunshine Tidings to get out of it, I'll have MacCready take out your kneecaps and camp your ass until someone else can come out to carry you."

"And just what are they gonna do with me at the Castle?"

"Dunno. Probably interrogate you. I'll leave it to Miss Shaw to figure out." MacCready had met Ronnie Shaw. He liked her well enough. He also had a feeling she probably wouldn't like Kellogg. "But at least if we ever need more information on the Institute, we'll have a resource on hand."

"So I'm a prisoner."

"I mean, it's not like I'm gonna just let you go." As an afterthought, Ted added, "MacCready, make sure to get his weapons while you're at it."

MacCready rolled his eyes. "Do I at least get to keep 'em?"

"Sure."

"Nice. In that case..." Grinning, he kneeled down to begin the process of a thorough pat-down. If nothing else, he was gonna come out of this job absolutely loaded.

(The pat-down also gave him an excuse to not have to watch as Ted made his way back over to Harkness. To not listen as he tried to get the guy's attention, tugging on his hands. His collar. His face.  _Hey, babe. It's okay. I'll fix this._ MacCready had no desire to see the nothing in those eyes, or the profound hurt in Ted's. Easier to ignore it.)

Above him, Kellogg sighed. "Suppose you've got a plan for what to do with him too, then."

Ted bit his lip as he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I'm gonna take him home."

"And then?"

"Then... I dunno." He let go of Harkness, taking a step back. MacCready had lost sight of his face. "Guess I'll figure it out from there."

\---

Getting Harkness to follow them turned out to be the biggest challenge they would face on the way back. He had to be barked at, ordered around. It felt so weird calling him "A3-21" like he was something off of an assembly line, and even weirder when he shuffled along obediently behind them with that perfectly mechanical gait and dead-eyed stare. It was like there wasn't anything left of the mostly stoic, sometimes skittish, occasionally terrifying General.

Like he was some kind of robot. Or like he was some braindead feral, working on instinct. And yeah, given that he was a synth, MacCready supposed he was a kind of robot. But he'd been a robot that acted so much like a person - albeit a screwed up person with a lot of internalized problems - that MacCready would never've guessed anything was different about him at all.

Maybe that should've been freaky, but really it just made it kind of sad and messed up. After all, Ted didn't look like someone who was hurt that the Institute had tricked him, he looked like someone had ripped his heart out and stomped on it. All that energy and chatter he usually had, locked up behind a wall of cold steel.

They got to Sunshine Tidings without incident. Ted sent Kellogg off with a couple of his murder-bots. People there stared, but didn't say anything as Harkness was navigated to the first aid cabin with a hand on his arm as if to soften the blow of the sharp commands he was being given.

MacCready couldn't help thinking that they all must know by now. Wondering what they were all thinking, seeing their General like this.

Without waiting to be asked, he followed Ted and Harkness inside and closed the door behind himself. Locked it with grim tension in his bones. "So what are we gonna do?" he asked, as Harkness was directed into a chair.

Ted didn't respond until Harkness was settled. "We go to the Railroad," he said. "Wherever they are. If anyone can do something, it's them."

"What about the Institute? Like Kellogg said."

"The Institute would never actually stoop to the level of helping a synth. Even if they did, it'd be with strings attached." He straightened, finally easing off his power fist with a wince as his other hand was forced to move in the process. "No, they did this to corner me. Plan B, after plan A didn't work out."

"Why would they wanna corner you, though?"

Ted didn't look up from setting his power fist aside and getting a stim as he answered, "I'm the one responsible for the lynchpin of their operations."

MacCready frowned at him long and hard. "That... That doesn't make any sense."

"I was born pre-war. Before the bombs. The day the world ended I was put on ice in a vault, away from the radiation. Along with my family." He sucked in a breath through his teeth when the stim pierced the back of his hand, giving it a second to work before continuing. "The Institute needed a clean genome for their synths to have proper human meat-suits that weren't made of plastic and rubber and foam, so they broke into the vault, killed my wife, and stole my son to do it. Then they put me back in the freezer and let me sit there for sixty years."

Well... Fuck. "Jeez, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Kellogg was the one who did it," he added like it was a casual afterthought.

"And you decided  _not_ to kill him?"

Ted just shrugged. "No point. Wouldn't fix anything." The used stim was shoved into a nearby trashcan as he moved on to rooting through his pockets for something. Chems, probably; MacCready had seen him popping pills a few times now. Once the bottle was fished out, he put it down on a nearby shelf so he could grab some water to wash it all down with. "I can only guess that something's made them desperate for either my genome or my expertise. Either way, it's me they're after."

"But how'd they know Harkness was a synth? I mean, how can you tell?"

A furrow appeared in Ted's brow, the gears clearly turning in his head. "...The birds," he said after a moment, like some kind of revelation. "When he told me, I hadn't installed the turrets yet. The birds must've-"

"Whoa, whoa. The birds?" MacCready gestured to the ceiling. "Freaking  _birds_ tipped off the Institute?"

"If they can make synthetic people, they can make synthetic birds," Ted told him. "And the only time he's ever mentioned his designation out loud was back at my house when we were alone together. They'd have to know that to know what code to use, and I doubt he'd mention it casually to anyone else."

"Alone together, huh."

"Oh, fuck off. I was giving him a shave."

"I'm amazed anyone lets you near their face with sharp objects."

For a second it looked like Ted was going to punch him, but that anger died almost as soon as it'd flared. "Yeah," he said eventually. "Me too."

Hell, that was just heartbreaking. MacCready couldn't sit by and  _not_ help fix this one, could he?


	3. as we fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't matter whether or not Harkness would do the same for him. For Ted, it's never been conditional.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did y'all know Teamfight Tactics is really fun? it's really fun. riot games sure does know how to make time-sinks. don't start playing it, you'll literally never stop and it will eat your brain.
> 
> i'm still not sure which character i want to make into my LW. might put it to a vote over on my tumblr. both malak and hinerangi are contenders, but other characters are also in the running. not that it matters yet. will later, but not yet.
> 
> the next chapter may take a bit because it's handwritten right now. fingers still cold, typing hard. when will the warmth return? i miss having warm hands

By morning, the whole settlement would know. And the traders. And the couriers. Word would spread like wildfire: the General was a synth. A synth that the Institute had gone after, and broken. Details would change between retellings, but the designation  _A3-21_ would be on everyone's lips. From the moment they'd arrived at Sunshine Tidings, that much had been inevitable.

Ted knew that Harkness would hate this. That this wasn't how he'd planned to come out to everyone. He'd wanted to make sure the Minutemen were well-established first, with strong footholds across the entire Commonwealth. Then he'd announce it himself over a radio broadcast from the Castle:  _This is General Adam Harkness speaking, and I am a synth. My designation is A3-21. If you're an ally of the Institute, this is your chance to turn yourself in. Otherwise, anyone suspected of having Institute ties should be brought to the Castle for questioning._

He'd practiced it and everything. Run it by Ted a few times just to make sure it was worded and enunciated in a way that didn't leave room for argument. An earlier draft had even said  _"this is your chance to turn yourself in before I have you shot_ , _"_ and Ted had vetoed it because it was too threatening to people on the fence.

They hadn't expected the Institute to make the first move. Now not only was everyone going to find out, but they were going to know that if the Institute had broken Harkness, then there was no way he could be one of their agents. It was a clumsy, desperate misstep strategically, and frankly Ted had expected better. He'd hoped for a proper game of chess, not a chimp sticking pawns up its nose and trying to eat the board.

It was too hard to fight that. Especially when the results got him so... Emotional? Was that a tactful way to avoid the elephant in the room? He hadn't had a meltdown yet. Couldn't afford to. There was shit to do still. But when it did hit him...

Fuck, it was gonna be bad when it finally hit him.

Didn't matter though, did it? Harkness might not have a tight timetable on getting fixed like a catatonic human might, but he had responsibilities he needed to get back to. No matter what Ted wanted, the Minutemen needed their General back. He could waste time crying about it and let the Commonwealth go to shit, or he could get off his ass and start hunting down leads on how to do something about it.

(And then, when he had Harkness back in his arms,  _maybe_ he'd let himself do the thing where he alternated between crying and sleeping for a solid week. But only then.)

Ted didn't sleep that night. He stared at the ceiling until it was MacCready's turn to have the bed, taking the merc's place at the door and keeping watch until morning. When they left, he could feel the eyes of the slowly waking settlement on the three of them as they resumed their journey northward through the snow.

"I keep thinking he'll trip and fall," MacCready remarked.

"Walking on rough terrain was one of the first things CIT's robotics department perfected," Ted told the merc absently. He didn't even have to look to know that Harkness was having zero trouble keeping his footing. "Focus on keeping our route free of hostiles, please."

MacCready sighed. "If you say so."

And to think that they were just a week into the new year.

Ted had never heard Sanctuary Hills so quiet as it was when they came across that bridge with Harkness in tow. Even when Sturges met the three of them at the end of it, his voice was hushed. Afraid. He kept glancing at Harkness as if any second now, the General would just snap and start feeding people their own spines.

"We're still missin' a couple folks," he said. "Preston and Curie ain't here yet, but everybody else came as soon as they heard."

"Good. Get them into the Rosa building." Here, Ted gestured towards Harkness. "I'll be there once I get him settled in."

Sturges winced, looking away. "Is he, uh..."

"Wiped clean." Thankfully, Sturges was someone he wouldn't have to simplify things for. "If I thought I knew enough about whatever obsolete, modded build of the proprietary Institute operating system he's running on, I'd root around in his files to see if I could reverse it myself. But for all I know, that'd break him worse. So. Yeah." Ted sucked in a shaky breath and let it out nice and slow, forcing a smile. "Figured it was worth calling a meeting."

Not that smiling made Sturges any less worried. "Maybe Isabel would know somethin'?"

Honestly, Ted was pretty sure this was beyond all their abilities put together. But Sturges was trying to be nice, so... "Maybe," he said. "I'll ask at the meeting. Is she here?"

"Yeah, she's here. And Piper, and Lucy. Marcy too." Sturges reached out to pat him on the shoulder, offering his best attempt at being reassuring. "Don't you worry 'bout a thing, y'hear? We'll figure this out."

"Right," Ted mumbled. But he knew better. There was no way it was that easy.

\---

Years ago, Ted had learned that the worst part about being different from the norm in any way was having to come out to people. Again and again, with every new person he met.  _I'm disabled. I'm queer._ It was almost worse when he had a wife and a steady job, because people assumed that he was straight and able-bodied and he had to tell them that he wasn't. Sometimes they'd apologize, sometimes they'd feel guilty. Sometimes they thought he was being pushy just mentioning it. A few even stopped talking to him entirely.

At a table full of friends, he was reminded of those conversations so many years ago. Because Harkness had been outed. He was a synth, and a few of them hadn't had a clue until they'd heard from the grapevine. Until they'd seen him, dead-eyed and shuffling along behind Ted as he was led to the house that had stopped being just Ted's a while ago.

No one looked comfortable when he finally took his place at the table.

As if on autopilot, Ted mechanically laid out what had happened to the last detail. Everything he knew about Harkness and what the Institute had done. The truth about his son, or as much of it as he knew. What he knew about Kellogg, about the timeline of events, about synths. Might as well get it all out there since there was no point in hiding anymore; it felt for all the world like going over the diagnostic criteria of one of his illnesses, and the only way he'd ever been able to get through that was by being dispassionate about it.

"Guess that explains where you got all your intel, huh," Piper joked; she wilted when it only got her glared at.

This was not a fun table to be a part of. Nor was it a conversation any of them wanted to be having. "I'm sure there's things Harkness hasn't told me," Ted continued, "but for now, we have to act on what information we have and proceed on the assumption that this isn't reversible. We can't let this cripple our operations."

"But what can we even do at this point?" Marcy asked, snippy as ever. "Harkness is practically a legend. The things he's done have meant something to people. We can't just find a replacement for that at the drop of a hat."

Ted rolled his eyes. "We get the people angry, that's what," he said. "Sure, we'll have to be careful. Make sure they're not angry at the wrong people. But if we spin it right, we can let everyone know exactly who's responsible and where we're directing our energy. Then it doesn't matter who's in charge, at least not when it comes to optics."

All at once, Piper had perked up again. "Sounds like a job for a reporter to me."

"A reporter that could use the help of the roboticist in charge of supply lines to get the word out," Ted agreed, nodding to Isabel; she blinked as she tipped back in her seat. "I'll trust you two with figuring out the details."

Isabel threw such a sharp salute that she nearly tipped her chair with the motion. "Yessir-shitfuck! I-I mean, uh." She cleared her throat. "We'll, um. We'll do our best."

He didn't doubt that. "As for me, I'll be trying to figure out a way to fix this," he said. "MacCready, you'll be with me-"

Piper raised her hand. "I might know somebody who could help," she volunteered; he gestured for her to continue. "Nick Valentine, in Diamond City. He's a detective. Great guy."

"Sympathetic?"

"Oh, definitely. You'll know it when you see him."

She was hiding something, wasn't she? "Piper, this really isn't the time for dicking around."

"Just trust me, alright?" Well, at least she looked serious enough. "If anyone has the right connections for this, it's Nick."

"Alright, alright." He'd take it under advisement. "If my leads don't pan out, I'll go talk to your friend. Until then, we-"

The door to the carport swung open, creaking on its hinges, causing everyone in the room to look in that direction. Ted's breath caught in his chest at what he saw.

"Harkness..." Pushing away from the table, he was at the door in seconds. A3-21 stood before them, blank-faced and motionless in the doorway. Eyes looking straight ahead, unblinking. When Ted took his hands, they were freezing cold. He must've waited for the door to blow open; he probably couldn't handle things like doorknobs, cognitively speaking.

It was Ted's fault that he was here. Either the  _stay_ command wasn't emphatic enough to override the earlier  _follow_ or A3-21 had run out of memory to recall that he'd been told to stay at all, which Ted should've foreseen. Whichever one it was, everyone was staring. Everyone had been reminded again. Harkness was a synth. He wasn't human, nor had he ever been. 

Ted smiled, smoothing his thumbs over the backs of A3-21's hands. The synth didn't so much as blink. "Hey, c'mon. Let's get you back in the house, okay?"

Not a word. He really had followed because of a programming quirk, hadn't he?

Fuck. The rest of the meeting would have to wait, he supposed. "Come on, A3-21," he said more firmly. Squeezing through the doorway, he came out the other side already tugging the synth in the direction of their house. "Follow me. It's not far."

He didn't know why he was saying it. It wasn't necessary; A3-21 wouldn't care whether or not it was far, nor would he even register where they were going. And yet Ted still said it. Still clung to A3-21's hand as he led the synth across the street. He had to believe Harkness was still in there, and Harkness would be hurt if he acted standoffish.

"There we go," he said as he took A3-21 inside, leading the synth to a chair. "Go on, sit down. Right here, that's it..."

The synth fell obediently into place, perfectly straight-backed and placid. Staring straight ahead, wordless as he'd been for the past day and a half. Ted smoothed a hand through his hair and smiled, leaning forward to kiss his forehead. Like Harkness would do for him.

"I'm just going to Bunker Hill, okay?" he assured. "I'll be back in like a week, I swear. And I'll have MacCready with me the whole time."

Nothing.

"Hey." As gently as he could, he took A3-21's chin in hand and tipped it up to point that dead-eyed gaze at himself. "I'm not gonna let the Institute get their hands on either of us, alright? I'll find a way to fix this."

The silence hurt. The  _nothing_ hurt. Harkness was kind of a stoic, sure, but hardly a brick wall. Ted was desperate for him to say something. Anything. Even one of those quiet panic attacks would be preferable to this; Ted could only imagine what might be going on behind that expressionless mask if the program that was Harkness was still running underneath it all. The terror, the helplessness, the paranoia.

Maybe that was why he felt he had to break the silence somehow. "I love you," he said, shifting his hand and tracing the outline of a scarred cheekbone with his thumb. "Wait for me, okay?"

No matter what it cost him, Ted had to fix this.


End file.
